WELAKA, Fla. — Pickleball — for Bill Melcher, he calls this sport his addiction.
“I've come in second a whole lot of times, but every game is a win," Melcher said. "I'm not laying at home on the couch."
Melcher and his wife started the Welaka Pickleball League more than a decade ago, getting their neighbors hooked.
“On our big days we had 42 people here, and I mean they were waiting, we were actually transporting them on golf carts down to the other parks to our tennis courts,” Melcher said.
But, these are more than pickleball courts.
When a game isn't in play, the courts are used as a driveway for a fire station and a basketball court. Now thanks to a $2 million grant from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), these pickleball players will finally have a court to call their own.
“The new asphalt court with the painted surface, it's a lot easier on the knees," Melcher told First Coast News. "It's a lot safer and not as abrasive as this concrete."
The grant from the DEP will be used to renovate the vacant baseball field into eight new pickleball courts. It's a project Mayor Jaimie Watts says residents are looking forward to.
“Our demographic is primarily 55 and older and we were talking earlier about having parks that would meet the needs of the community, well this is something that will meet the needs of my community,” Watts said.
And when the new courts are built, Melcher believes he will have even more people to play against, with plans to host tournaments with neighboring leagues on top of playing three times a week.
“As the game grows, we’re going to have more people coming in and we got more people coming in now, newer people, younger people, and they move a lot faster than the original people,” Melcher said.
Melcher and others in Welaka will be able to start playing pickleball on the new courts by New Year's Day 2025.